Toby Harris

Toby Harris, PhD

I use art, design and engineering to do interesting things. Here, that’s getting a robot to do stand-up comedy to better understand performer–audience interaction. This site logs a lot more, currently 25 projects since 2000, and 1099 diary entries since 2006.

A quick tour | ○●○○○

A problem I always hit is the inflexibility of media, even with computers. I often think of oral storytellers, who adapt the story, moment-by-moment, to the audience. They navigate story-worlds rather than recounting fixed narratives. Digital media should be this dynamic. Here, I worked with the BBC to model narrative and ask what a true ‘web adaptation’ of a story might be.

A quick tour | ○○●○○

My instinct is to think like a product designer. On occasion, I am actually one. This is video hardware I hacked together for my own needs, and spun into a retail product. But I’m a good all-rounder too: every detail of it was my doing, from the PCB traces to the marketing copy. And, of course, the business model.